Over the last year the North East of England, particularly Sunderland, has seen demonstrations by several far-right, racist and fascist groups such as English Defence League (EDL), British National Party (BNP) and Northern Patriotic Front (NPF) ostensibly about plans for a mosque in the Millfield area of the town. The BNP also tried a similar campaign in nearby Pallion regarding halal products in a sandwich shop. They gave that up after continually being outnumbered and the infamous Truth Truck V Bridge fiasco.

On March 30th 2013 the EDL and several other tiny splinter groups combined to protest in Millfield. One local anti-racism group called SAFC, whose leadership is dominated by Socialist Workers Party (SWP) types started to deliberately block, mislead and smear anyone who questioned their plans or lack of democracy with anti-anarchist hysteria being a favourite tactic with their leader. There was no attempt to engage politically with their…

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Well, it’s nearly upon us. Skill Share 2012 is set to go ahead this Saturday (28th July) and it’s shaping up to be a great afternoon. Come along and enjoy engaging workshops and discussions on such issues as antifascism, organising in the workplace, animal liberation and squatting; meet and chat to people from groups such as the Anarchist Federation, IWW and Autonomous Nottingham; try your hand at gamelan; or simply enjoy some tasty vegan food. See below for a full programme.

The event kicks off at 1pm at Croft Street Community Centre (see below for details).

We hope to see you there!

Programme:

Croft Street Community Centre, Baggeholme Road, Lincoln, LN2 5AX:

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LUC will be holding a stall to promote next month’s Skill Share, and a discussion on organising & agitating in a small town, at the 3rd Sheffield Anarchist Bookfair. We aim to have a few unique items to sell to raise funds for the Skill Share – more details when we can confirm what will be available.

Our talk will take place in the Bookfair’s smaller discussion room.

3.45 – 4.45 Lincoln Underground Collective – Anarchism in a sleepy town
A discussion of the actions, methods & capabilities of organising groups in small towns & cities; engaging with the public, participating in workers’ struggles & agitating depoliticised areas, using LUC’s activities over the past year as an example.

The event will take place at Croft Street Community Centre, a very well-equipped, accessible & spacious venue roughly 1/2 mile from the city centre. Venue website: http://www.croftstreetcentre.co.uk/

We are looking for local & regional groups who’d like to run discussions & workshops, so if you’d be interested in helping please contact us at lincolnundergroundcollective – at – riseup.net with details.

Following on from anti-workfare pickets in Lincoln called by Youth Fight For Jobs and Lincoln Underground Collective (LUC) on 3rd March and 31st March respectively, LUC is calling for further action on Saturday 19th May.

Although providers are pulling out of the schemes and some benefit sanctions have been dropped (for now), there is still a lot more work to be done. Every day, unemployed people are being forced into unpaid work on one of the government’s five workfare schemes. As well as the fact that this effectively amounts to using the unemployed as slave labour, it also threatens the job security of the paid staff in these workplaces.

Join us in taking direct action against those companies who are signed up to these exploitative schemes. Bring flags, banners, placards and leaflets and let’s show workfare providers that we won’t sit back and let them exploit workers (employed and unemployed) for their own selfish interests. If they exploit us, we will shut them down!

Assemble at 11am at the Angel Coffee Shop (Free school lane) before we move off to our first target.

Well, election season is done and dusted for another year. After weeks of canvassing, leafleting and shameless electioneering leading up to Thursday 3rd May, political parties can relax for a bit until they have to do it all again next year.

It’s a pretty well-known fact that most anarchists don’t vote in elections. For this, we’ve been accused of being lazy, apathetic, abstentionist, and more, but all of these accusations are false and misguided. Non-voting is, to us, enshrined in our very ideology, and is paramount to the idea of anti-authoritarianism and self-organisation. It’s not the voting we disagree with, it’s what we’re being asked to vote for that’s the problem.

As an alternative to voting, anarchists have always pushed for direct action and self-organisation. This highlights a major criticism we hold of the electoral system. As anti-authoritarians, we would rather see the working class organise on a non-hierarchical level to take charge of our own struggles rather than voting in a ‘leader’ or ‘representative’ to do it for us. The electoral system completely contradicts this fundamental principle of the anarchist ideology, hence why we use the phrase, “Don’t vote, organise!” Some people argue that it is possible to both organise direct action on a grassroots level and vote in elections. However, we feel that the latter distracts from the former in such a way that voting in elections is actually damaging to the idea of self-organisation and direct action. Taking part in the electoral system justifies its existence, and thus undermines the need for alternative methods of resistance.

The main crux of the argument for non-voting, however, is that it doesn’t achieve anything anyway. As Emma Goldman famously said, “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” The electoral system merely allows us to choose a new set of oppressors, all of whom are essentially clones of each other anyway. The main aim of parliament is to maintain the current system, keeping those at the top where they are with the majority of the wealth and all of the power, thus allowing them to exploit the rest of us for their own benefit. Voting merely props this system up by giving it the illusion of ‘democracy’. By not voting or spoiling your ballot, you are symbolising the need for a better system, and an increasing amount of people are adhering to this idea. Voter turnout on Thursday was 32% nationally and even lower here in Lincoln at just under 27%. This isn’t because people are ‘lazy’ or ‘apathetic’, it’s because they are growing disillusioned with the current political system and waking up to the fact that their votes effectively mean nothing. People don’t hate politics, they hate politicians.

It’s also worth noting that with consistently low turnouts such as we saw on Thursday, no government can be legitimate when the majority of people did not vote for them.

This is not to say that people who vote for tactical reasons are doing anything wrong. For example, in an area where a far-right party like the BNP or National Front are standing, many people will choose to vote for a stronger candidate, despite whether or not they agree with their politics, just to increase the chances of keeping the fascists out. This desire to fight fascism is obviously commendable, but there are other, more effective methods of doing so. Fighting fascism politically requires action before polling day. This means targeting the areas they use as recruitment grounds (football stadiums, working class estates etc.) and spreading anti-fascist propaganda to ensure people really know what they are voting for when they put a cross next to a BNP candidate. In other words, more direct actions are needed in the fight against fascism. It is dangerous to rely solely on the electoral system.

With regards to the results of Thursday’s election, as predicted, Labour made huge gains across the country. Here in Lincoln, they won all but one of the council wards. This is indicative of a seemingly never-ending cycle in British politics. The Tories screw us over, people get angry and vote in Labour, Labour screw us over, people get angry and vote in the Tories and so on. Although in this election it would appear the dominant tendency was for people to get angry and not vote, which would also account for Labour achieving a higher percentage. Nonetheless, this clearly demonstrates how ineffectual the electoral system really is, hence why we continue to push for grassroots self-organisation and direct action.

Another interesting point to note is the success of UKIP. In many places across the country, the proto-fascists did better than the Lib Dems (although this is probably more indicative of the plummeting popularity of the Lib Dems rather than a particularly significant gain in support for UKIP). Due to the continual failings of the BNP, it could be that more far-right voters, including Tory voters who feel their party in its current form isn’t right-wing enough, are now switching to UKIP instead. It’s important to keep an eye on these developments. In times of austerity, there is always a surge in support for the far-right, and whilst we are making gains combatting them on the streets, it’s important to combat them politically as well, using grassroots direct action methods such as those outlined earlier in this article.

On the morning of the 28th April, several pro-choice activists, including members of LUC and Socialist Students Lincoln (SSL) went to counter a ‘kerbside vigil’ by the anti-choice Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC).

After a long walk from the City Centre to the Grandstand on the outskirts of the city (where SPUC had bravely decided to hold their demonstration, well away from the public and potential opponents), we arrived at 11.00, just as the pro-lifers finished praying and began to align themselves along the kerb with signs declaring that abortion ‘kills children and hurts women’, along with a premium rate phone number for an anti-abortion helpline. We quickly set up on the opposite side of the main road with our own pro-women and pro-choice placards. They apparently weren’t anticipating any opposition and looked quite shocked to see us there.

It wasn’t long before a few of them decided to cross the road and engage us in debate. One of them was particularly aggressive, and after unsuccessfully trying to intimidate a few activists on our side, he was laughed back across the road where he sulked behind a placard for the remainder of their ‘protest’. Another fundamentalist Christian attempted to explain the scientific basis behind the story of Noah’s Ark, claiming there was ‘no evidence’ to support evolution. Perhaps the most shocking though, was a woman who came over with her placard to engage with us. When confronted with difficult questions, she astonishingly suggested that women who fall pregnant as a result of being raped should see it as “a blessing”, and carry the child to term. Needless to say, this comment wasn’t very well received.

A few of us left shortly before 12.00 to attend the Save the NHS march in the City Centre, but a good number stayed to oppose SPUC until they left. Interestingly, the Tory MP for Lincoln, Karl McCartney apparently turned up, seemingly to commend the pro-lifers, but then left when he saw pro-choice opposition. It would not surprise us in the least if Karl was a fan of the patriarchal, homophobic, right-wing Christian group, having espoused similar sentiments himself on numerous occasions. The Skeptical Voter Wiki entry on Karl also shows that he “voted for Nadine Dorries’s amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill on 7 September 2011, which was ultimately defeated by 368 to 118 votes. This amendment would have stopped BPAS and Marie Stopes from providing counselling for women with unwanted pregnancies and allowed ‘independent’ counselling including that provided by faith-based organisations.”

All in all, the counter-protest was a success. We well and truly outnumbered and humiliated them and had a huge number of passing motorists honk and wave in support. The anti-choice brigade, in contrast, mustered one or two cars registering support for them.

It is also interesting to note the percentage of female activists on both sides. We feel it is important for women to take the lead in actively opposing anti-choice groups like SPUC as they are directly affected by the issue of abortion. On our side, we had a fairly even male to female ratio. The SPUC vigil, on the other hand, was overwhelmingly male. An interesting statistic (and one that adorned one of our placards) is that over 70% of pro-lifers are male, and 0% of those will ever be pregnant. Those men who turned out for the SPUC vigil on Saturday will never understand what it is like to go through an abortion or an unwanted pregnancy, and it’s high time they stopped using outdated religious dogma to try to guilt women into thinking they don’t have a choice in what they do with their own bodies.

LUC would like to extend our huge respect and solidarity to everyone who came out to oppose SPUC, both in Lincoln and across the country. We will continue to confront them whenever they take to the streets, and always fight to keep abortion safe, free and legal.